


The Portraits

by orphan_account



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - High School, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, M/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-07-02
Updated: 2014-07-08
Packaged: 2018-02-07 04:59:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,283
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1885947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern day High School AU: Bucky Barnes - a name everyone at Howard Stark High School knows. He's gorgeous, popular and the school's drama star. Steve Rogers is a nobody - a shrimpy art class freak and, generally totally invisible, except to his tough-as-nails best friend, Natasha Romanov. What happens when the drama department desperately needs a portrait painter for an upcoming production? As Steve Rogers soon learns, in the passionate, loud world of theatre - anything can happen. IN PROGRESS. For Sydney (sxmwilsons) for the Star Spangled Exchange on Tumblr (enjoy!!)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. One

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! This is a work I did for tumblr's Star Spangled Exchange (starspangledexchange.tumblr.com) and it is for Sydney sxmwilsons. It's still in progress, I'll be posting new chapters as I finish them. Not sure how long it'll be yet, but, without further ado, enjoy!
> 
> ( PS: HMU on tumblr - captainsandsoldiers ^___^ )

Despite the fact that there was a very pressing AP Biology review open on the desk in front of Steve Rogers, his mind couldn’t help but start to wonder. It wasn’t really his fault, the review was difficult and boring and the library was full of students who shared his study hall period, many of whom were chattering quietly or whispering, and their conversations and voices were distracting him.

Where was Nat when he needed her? He pictured his pretty seventeen year old friend in his head. He’d imagined her with her typical expression, a sort of mixture of boredom and annoyance, and in her usual hoodie-corduroy jacket combo. Her very wavy, crimson hair fell in a sort of choppy bob, and with a smirk, he remembered the last haircut she’d given herself. Almost subconsciously, he put his pencil to the margins of the worksheet before him, starting to sketch the lines of her angular face, recalling them with perfect clarity in his head.

Before he knew it, there was a small Natasha Romanov on his paper, looking slightly perturbedly back at him, one brow raised as if about to make a comment about getting on with his review. That was why he’d needed her now, there was nobody else around to bully him into studying. The friendly kind of bullying, anyway. At this point, the work he was supposed to be doing was far from his head, and his eyes were lazily sliding around the library, watching people working and talking quietly.

As per usual, he was looking for a specific person, though he wouldn’t admit that. It took him all of five seconds to find _him_ ; he was seated a table one down from the large one Steve was at, surrounded by other attractive, popular people. Steve noticed that if he moved his chair just two inches to the left, he could get an unobstructed view, and he automatically did so. Between his fingers, his pencil still balanced, and he subconsciously bit down on his lower lip.

 _Fucking fuck_. The person he was so diligently observing was wearing an incredibly fetching black leather jacket, and was bent over a textbook. His angular profile was facing toward Steve, his brow slightly furrowed, and one arm was buried in his hair as he leaned on it. That goddamn leather jacket. It made the person in question look incredibly _bad boy-ish_ , and Steve, along with about half the girls in the school, totally fell for it.

 _He fucking knew it, too_ , Steve thought to himself. How else could someone have that much natural charm, that 1950s movie star attitude that seemed to compliment that sort of jacket to perfection? He had other good qualities, too - thick, neatly trimmed brown hair that Steve would give a fucking toe to run a hand through… long legs clad in narrow jeans that were flattering in all the right places - and there were plenty of right places. His jaw, squaring into adulthood, was strong, sometimes smattered with stubble. Steve barely ever needed to shave at all, this would be attributed to his shrimpiness.

Unlike the stunning object of his musings sitting a table down, Steve was an incredibly slight young man. He didn’t pay attention to the body part of health class (he was usually drawing in his notebooks), but he was pretty sure his muscle mass was like, zero. _If that was possible_. His t shirt hung off his bony frame and his jeans clung to his narrow hips only through the help of a belt fastened to the last hole. Being this thin and of generally sickly disposition meant he was usually cold if inside, so he wore a slightly too big navy cardigan over his skinny shoulders to keep comfortable.

If there was anything anyone was sure of, it was that he and James “Bucky” Barnes, were absolute and total opposites, Steve thought gloomily. His moroseness, which usually came upon him when he was staring at Bucky, led him to take pencil to paper. On the same worksheet, some inches below his sketch of Natasha, he began another.

He was “James” to most of the teachers, “Buck” or “Barnes” to many guy friends, and just Bucky to most everyone else. It was a nickname he’d picked up at home and he’d never challenged. Steve liked this about him - some might get annoyed that they were straddled with a childhood nickname deep into high school, but Bucky embraced it. He always made sure that in the school drama production programs in which he regularly featured, he was billed as James “Bucky” Barnes.

It was generally rare that school drama stars were as popular as Bucky. In most schools, the people in the drama department stuck together and kept to themselves, judging most too uncultured to “really” understand them. But at Howard Stark High School in Brooklyn, New York, the school’s drama darling was almost universally liked.

For Christ sake, anybody who’d seen him on stage would tell you that he had a _gift_. A way to enrapture the audience, to command a scene whether he was playing Macbeth or Stanley Kowalski or Dorian Gray. And then there was Steve Rogers - a small, shrimpy, practically invisible to the general student population art class freak. He slid through the halls from day to day like a pale wisp of a boy, overexerting himself carrying a textbook load that was easily manageable for most girls his age. He was rarely without his sketchbook and spent a good deal of his time down in the school’s basement art rooms, where the light streamed down from narrow windows all along the top of the walls, where it always smelled pleasantly like paint and art supplies, where people kept to themselves as they worked and didn’t judge or laugh or comment. This was the closest thing to a haven Steve had in the school.

A sudden thump beside him woke him from his reverie. He quickly covered what he’d been drawing with his elbow, looking up at the person who’d just dumped an armload of notebooks onto the table next to him, where there was an empty seat.

“Oh. Hey.” he said, giving the tall girl a small smile. She made no reply, only pulled out the chair to sit down, and it took him a few seconds to realize that no, she wasn’t ignoring him - the tinny sound of loud punk music coming from the earbuds in her ears revealed why. She sat and pulled the things out and tossed her ipod onto her notebook.

“Hey, there.” she said, glancing at him.

“Hey.” Steve replied with a chuckle. He leaned back and with a yawn, stretched his arms above his head. “About time you showed up.”

“Yeah, I can see you’ve been busy,” Natasha smirked, her eyes on his exposed worksheet.

 _Shit_.

He snapped back to normal and snatched it off the table.

“Yeah, well… I got distracted.”

“I can see that. Was that me on there?”

Steve said nothing and hugged the sheet to his chest with a cough, using the other arm to busy himself with opening his textbook. She continued to watch him, amused.

“I saw who else was on there. You _really_ have been procrastinating.” she observed innocently. Steve could feel his face getting warm but was resolute in the face of his teasing best friend.

“No comment.” he replied, sliding the sheet between a pair of notebooks. Natasha leaned back slightly, crossing her arms and looking at the crowded library with at ease, with half closed eyes.

“He is looking mighty fine today.” she commented. Steve didn’t need to look to tell who she was talking about.

“I’ll tell Clint you said that.” Steve retorted, still feeling embarrassed, but relaxing now that was around pleasant company. Natasha rolled her eyes and straightened back out, cracking on with her work. That was an empty threat. Clint was Natasha’s… uh, you’d have to ask her yourself. Boyfriend? In any case, they were both sort of quiet, intense people. In other words, good for each other.

At least she agreed with him about the Bucky thing.

“What are you doing after school today, then?” Natasha inquired without looking up.

“Uh, wanna guess?”

Natasha smirked.

“Right, smoking cigarettes in Brighton Beach with the Russian mobsters. Or is that raving with cokeheads and hipsters in Williamsburg?”

Steve laughed. “Whichever seems cooler to you.” he said, grinning at his crimson haired best friend.


	2. Two

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Wow, this fic got more response than I'd anticipated ^____^ So yes, this super cheesy high school teen blah blah blah continues.... please enjoy. (I'm also on tumblr as captainsandsoldiers, btw!)
> 
> *nudgewink* don't forget to leave kudos/comments *nudgewink*

The real place Steve was headed after school was not nearly as glamorous or “cool” as what Natasha had jokingly guessed, but it was heaven enough for Steve after a long, trying day of school. He felt his spirits rising as he walked down the stairs toward the basements, passing various people heading upstairs to leave for the day, both parties ignoring one another. Steve wasn’t in the talking mood, anyway. Not that he was used to getting stopped in the hallways – he didn’t have that many friends at Howard Stark High School.

He made it out of the stairwell, feeling the thrill in his chest after all the stairs as he usually did, damn his weak constitution. Heading past rows of navy blue lockers, he made his way down the silent and empty hallway, save for the quiet tap of his loafers on the floor and the soft thumping sound of his messenger bag hitting him in the back of the leg.

The art room at Howard Stark was a fairly standard one, but Steve loved it very much. Each wall was painted a different bright color, giving the room a cheerfulness that the rest of the school lacked, with its linoleum floors and drab white walls. There as also numerous artworks and art related posters to be seen around, in other words, something interesting everywhere you looked. A number of large square tables surrounded by stools dotted the room, where the students sat to do their work. Counters in two corners held rows of sinks, and above and below them, cabinets crowded with art supplies.

Next door was the flat file room, where students stored in progress works, and drying racks for paintings and the like. There was also doorways leading off into the small matt room where the paper cutters and more storage was, the big walk in closet for the art supplies, and the office of Steve’s favorite person in the school, the art teacher, Ms. Butler. Young and energetic, she was always an encouraging voice in the Stark’s art department. With her mass of incredibly curly raven hair and cats eye glasses, she was just the sort of perfect New York eccentric to be teaching art at a Brooklyn high school. Steve couldn’t get enough of her.

At the moment, there wasn’t anybody in the room, however. The lack of the sound of indie music blasting from the office told him that Ms. Butler was not there right now, either. That was also all right by Steve. Being alone was nothing he wasn’t used to. He slid his cardigan off his shoulders and left it on a nearby stool, along with his bag. The warm tranquility that came with being in the art room and getting back to what he did best washed over him. He headed into the flat file room, humming to himself.

From the various cubbies and flat files, he procured his bigger, class issue sketchbook and the huge anatomy reference book, stacking atop that a small tray of drawing pencils and other supplies. He was going to practice his anatomy and faces, and continuing to hum, he walked out of the closet and back into the art room.

He turned to head back to his table without looking up. Suddenly, there came the sound of someone clearing his or her throat, and Steve whirled around to see who it was. In his surprise, he sent his armload of art supplies and books flying. The pencil tray landed upside down and sent the contents rolling everywhere.

The anatomy book landed with an incredibly loud _thump_ in front of a pair of feet. They were clad in shiny leather brogues and dark colored skinny jeans, and they belonged to the person who’d cleared their throat, and that person quickly bent down to a squat.

So, to his intense surprise, Steve found himself face to face with none other than Bucky Barnes.

“Sorry,” Bucky said in his pleasantly low voice, giving Steve a small smile. He lifted the large book easily with one hand and handed it to Steve. Steve couldn’t help but notice how small and pale his own hands looked clutching the book compared to Bucky’s. They both rose at the same time.

“It’s fine.” Steve mumbled, sliding the book onto the table next to him. With another start, his eyes rose to see that there was a curvy female figure perched on it.

What was _Peggy Carter_ doing down here?

His grey eyes flicked from Peggy’s face to Bucky’s. There was a brief moment of silence.

“Uh, can I help you?” he asked, then. Bucky quickly met eyes with Peggy, and then smiled at Steve as if he remembered his true purpose for venturing down here.

Steve’s mind flicked through the possibilities in a split second. _They’re probably looking for someone, or for art supplies for the show.... what was it that they were putting on now?_

“I don’t think we’ve ever actually met.” Bucky prompted. His smile reached his warm eyes. He’d shed his leather jacket, and was now clad in just his jeans and a grey long sleeved shirt. Steve’s artists mind, particularly set on anatomy at this point, quickly took in the angle of his well-proportioned shoulders to his waist. It took Steve a few moments to remember to reply.

“I know you,” Steve replied finally. He was far from over the embarrassment of dropping all his books; his words came too quickly in his awkwardness. “I mean, I know your name. Buck- err, James.”

 _Like I don’t fucking know_.

“Call me Bucky, ‘course. You’re Steve, right?”

Steve felt the thrill in his chest again, feeling stupid for feeling like a middle school girl.

“Yeah,” he managed, and looked over his own shoulder just to double check that there wasn’t anyone else in the room. “You guys... looking for someone?”

“We’re looking for you.” Peggy replied, regarding him with her brown eyes sparkling with curiosity. She gave a small tilt of her head, sizing him up. “Don’t think we have any classes together. I’m Peggy.”

Her British accent was crisp and pleasant to the ear. Despite her last pronouncement, Steve knew plenty about her already. Her name was Peggy Carter; she was a new student this year, and she'd moved to Brooklyn from the UK. Despite the fact that it was only the end of September, she had easily already made a splash at HSHS, as it was affectionately called. After all, she was beautiful and sharp and witty, and already had secured a role in the first play of the school year, clearly.

She sat with her legs crossed, her tweed skirt hugging her curves. From head to toe she looked very neatly put together, with her white blouse and black heels of at least three inches. Her brown hair fell in gentle waves over her shoulder. _Gutsy New York City/London style, duh_. And not to be forgotten was the crimson lipstick that had already become somewhat of a trademark for her.

“I know,” Steve said, feeling lame the moment he said it. “Uh, looking for _me_?”

“We’re here at the express recommendation of Ms. Butler.” Bucky spoke up again, leaning his weight onto one leg and crossing his arms over his chest. He smiled at Steve. “She tells us you’re just the sort of person we need. You know we’re putting on _Pride and Prejudice_ , right?”

 _Oh_. Steve nodded, still recovering somewhat from the shock of seeing these two people down here, claiming they were looking for _him_.

“Well, for this one pretty important scene we need two portraits, one of each of us. I’m playing Mr. Darcy, and Peggy’s playing my younger sister, Georgiana.”

“The scene where Elizabeth visits Pemberly.” Steve replied automatically. He’d read _Pride and Prejudice_ at least twice at this point and seen the movie far more than that. In the scene, the protagonist, Elizabeth, finds herself at the home of the man she is sworn to hate, the wealthy Mr. Darcy. There she sees a portrait of him and is asked if it’s a good likeness. The scene is somewhat pivotal in Elizabeth’s slow realization that Mr. Darcy is not the arrogant, rude person she originally quickly judged him as.

“Yeah.” Bucky replied, the corner of his mouth flicking upward. “Could you do the portraits for us? I mean, the drama department. I know it’s a lot to ask but we can hook you up with some free tickets... and Ms. Butler said she’d give you class credit.”

He trailed off, and scratched the back of his neck, giving Steve an embarrassed grin.  

“Of course!” Steve chocked out a moment later, when he’d finally gotten over the surprise. “I mean, yeah, I’ll do it. Thanks for... picking me.”

“Are you kidding? Thank _you_!” Bucky replied, his eyes lighting up. He looked slightly relieved.

Steve wished he could have that grin seared into his brain forever.

"Come to rehearsal tomorrow after school. You’ll want to talk to Mr. Coulson – he’s directing. Find me, I’ll introduce you.”

Steve pictured the school’s assistant drama department director in his head. Middle aged and medium height, Mr. Coulson was a thin sort of man with a receding hairline and a fondness for wearing pretty much the exact same outfit every day. Privately Steve didn’t think he looked or behaved much like an actor, but appearances could obviously be deceiving.... _so he was doing Pride and Prejudice. Hm_.

“Speaking of Coulson....” Peggy commented, looking up at the clock on the wall. “We should probably get back.”

She slid off the table and straightened, brushing invisible dust off her skirt and sweeping her hair over her shoulder. Standing, she was a good several inches taller than Steve. It didn’t take much to get why she was already so popular.

“Right.” Bucky said, clapping his hands together and absently sort of rubbing them against one another, looking at the clock himself. He then looked back at Steve and smiled again. “Catch you later, then.”  

He gave Steve a jokey salute and he and Peggy made to leave. Steve caught Peggy shooting him a glance over her shoulder as the pair of them were walking out the door. It was hard to guess her reasons for doing so; her expression was neutral.

After they vacated, the room was back to where it was when Steve originally entered, empty and silent. Steve just stood there for a little while. The exchange he’d just had was only several minutes, but it felt very surreal. He picked up his hands and looked at them. They were small and pale; he remembered how different they had looked to Bucky’s all of a sudden. Even Peggy had bigger hands then him, he would guess.

But someone (finally) needed these hands, for something... His face split into a wide smile all of a sudden. For that particular second, he didn’t have any worries about the assignment or feel any of the pressure.

All he knew was they wanted portraits. _He_ wanted portraits. Hell, he’d give them portraits. Steve Rogers had his weaknesses, he had plenty - but lack of dedication was not one of them.


End file.
